How to automate Microsoft Office 2007 installation

I was just updating some documentation on our wiki and found some old notes on automating Office 2007 installation.  We upgraded our Microsoft Office software early last year from Office 2003 (and a few Office XP) to Office 2007 and this simple installation script saved us a lot of time. Here are the steps:

Step 1.  Copy the contents of the Office 2007 installation CD (or package) to a network share (eg. \\server\Office12).

Step 2.  Run the Office Customization Tool and create a setup customization file (I got these instructions from a BDD 2007 document on Microsoft’s website).

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Internet Explorer Emergency Patch

Microsoft just released this patch early today.  It’s supposed to patch a very serious vulnerability in IE and some security analysts are even suggesting to use a different browser until the vulnerability is completely patched.

If you’re using WSUS it should already be available, we synchronized our WSUS server early this afternoon and set a deadline for it to get it installed on all our computers as soon as possible.

Read more about it here.

Windows XP: Updating a domain account’s local cached password

So I took a laptop home from work tonight to do some tests and I forgot that I haven’t logged in to that laptop with my domain account for quite some time now so I of course got the message “Domain YOURDOMAIN is not available” and I couldn’t log in.

I connect to our network over a VPN connection using Cisco VPN Client but I first have to be logged in to Windows to do this.  I want to be able to log in with my domain account directly then log in to the VPN as it is more convenient so here’s what I did to update the local cache for my domain profile:

1. Log in as local Administrator.
2. Log in to the VPN.
3. While still connected to the VPN, do a “Run As” on a program.  In my case, I did a “Run As” with Outlook (press shift+right mouse click on the program’s icon, choose the option “Run As…” -> “The following user:” myDomain\username -> enter your current domain password) and the program should open using the profile of the user you wanted to run as.
4. Log off (which will also disconnect the VPN connection).
5. Log back in to your domain account using your current domain password and it should take it.

If you’re already able to log in with the cached password, but your current domain password is different from the cached password, while connected to the VPN you can just press CTRL+ALT+DEL, choose the option “Lock Computer”, and then unlock it but this time using your current domain password and that should update the cached password.

Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user…

Error Message:  “\\x.x.x.x is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resource.  Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

Multiple connections to a server or shared resource by the same user, using more than one user name, are not allowed.  Disconnect all previous connections to the server or shared resource and try again.”

I get this once in a while when working on files remotely.  To make it go away, do the following:

1. Go to Start->Run, type in cmd and hit Enter.
2. Type net use to view all mapped network shares.
3. Type net use \\network_share /del to disconnect that specific network share or  type net use * /del to disconnect all network shares.

Security Warning: “The publisher could not be verified”

Warning Message: “The publisher could not be verified. Are you sure you want to run this software?”

I got this warning message last week while testing a group policy object to run a small program from a network drive when users log in to the domain.

After some googling, it turned out that this feature was added in Windows XP Service Pack 2 and it checks whether the program has a digital signature attached.

To prevent this from appearing do the following:

1. Open the Group Policy management console (Start->Run->gpedit.msc)
2. Go to User Configuration->Administrative Templates->Windows Components->Attachment Manager
3. Enable “Inclusion list for moderate risk file types“
4. Add .exe to the list

Source: http://davestechshop.net/archive/2006/10/30/IE7PublisherCouldNotBeVerified.aspx

Exchange 2007 SP1: Message rejected as spam by Content Filtering

Error Message: “550 5.7.1 Message rejected as spam by Content Filtering.”

One of our users reported that after we applied Service Pack 1 and Update Rollup 1 to Exchange Server 2007, some of the emails that he has scheduled to send daily were getting rejected with the message above.

I guess the integrated anti-spam in Exchange got updated as well.

You can configure Content Filtering in Exchange to bypass specific users or domains.

Open the Exchange Management Shell:

# To check the Content Filter configuration, type in:

Get-ContentFilterConfig

# To set the Bypassed Senders (example):

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenders donotspamme@calazan.com, jdoe@abc.com

# To set the Bypassed Sender Domains (example):

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenderDomains calazan.com, *.xyz.com

Important Note: BypassedSenders and BypassedSenderDomains are multivalued properties. When you use the Set-ContentFilterConfig cmdlet, it will overwrite the values of those properties. If you just need to add more senders or domains, please follow the example below.

# To add Bypassed Senders:

$x = Get-ContentFilterConfig

$x.BypassedSenders += “jsmith@google.com”, “bhope@yahoo.com”

# To remove Bypassed Senders (can only be done one at a time):

$x = Get-ContentFilterConfig

$x.BypassedSenders -= “jsmith@google.com”

# To empty the list:

Set-ContentFilterConfig -BypassedSenders $null

Exchange Management Tools SP1: Service Remote Registry failed to reach status “Stopped”

I got this error while upgrading the Exchange Management Tools on my Windows XP computer at work to Service Pack 1. I checked the services and the Remote Registry service is stuck at “Stopping” status.

To fix this, simply set the Remote Registry service’s startup type to Manual, reboot your computer, try installing Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Management Tools again and it should now install successfully. The Remote Registry service will automatically start and the startup type will go back to Automatic after the installation.

Upgrading to Exchange Server 2007 SP1

We just upgraded from Exchange 2007 RTM to Exchange 2007 SP1 yesterday morning and I’m happy to say that the upgrade went very smoothly. It took about 20 minutes.

Here are some things to consider:

1. Install .NET Framework 2.0 SP1 before upgrading. This may not be required but Microsoft recommends it.
2. If you have more than one Exchange server, Microsoft recommends that you upgrade the servers running the Mailbox server role last. Upgrade your servers in the following order:
   1. Client Access servers
   2. Unified Messaging servers
   3. Hub Transport servers
   4. Edge Transport servers
   5. Mailbox servers
3. If you have third party software running on the Exchange server, stop the services/processes for those software before running the SP1 installation (e.g. antivirus, Backup Exec Remote Agent, etc.).
4. Check the compatibility of other software that use/connect to the Exchange server. Some examples:
   1. BlackBerry Enterprise Server. We have BES version 4.1.3 and I can confirm that this version works with Exchange 2007 SP1. E-mails, contacts, calendar, tasks, notes, Out-of-Office are synchronizing properly. No issues so far. I’m assuming that higher versions would also work.
   2. Symantec Backup Exec 11d. Make sure that you upgrade the Exchange Management Tools on the server running Backup Exec to Service Pack 1 as well (and install other patches for Exchange that you have installed on your Exchange server) or you may get this error: Unable to complete the operation for the selected resource using the specified options. The following error was returned when opening the Exchange Database file: ‘-514 The version of the log file is not compatible with the ESE version.’ Go here for more details: http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/289970.htm.

5. Read the release notes.

Update Rollup 1 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 (KB945684) was also just released three days ago and you may want to install this as well.